Occasionally, we find that large, highly regulated organizations require a physical air gap between their production systems and their support/project build systems such as development and QA.
This adds an extra layer of protection around the data stored in the production systems.
However, it makes managing the movement of changes across the landscape rather challenging.
Overcoming the air gap challenge
In recent years RSC has been challenged to overcome the air gap scenario, to allow organizations to manage changes between systems, which are incapable of communicating with each other.
In some cases organizations had multiple, siloed production instances, which were also unable to communicate with each other.
Creating separate control systems to monitor the activity on each side of the air gap solved the problem.
For organizations with multiple siloed production instances, a separate control system was set up to monitor the transport imports and activity.
To keep the control system in sync, RSC created a transport copy utility, which would write the approved transports to a USB device, along with import and sequencing details specific to the target system.
A USB device could be used to bridge the physical air gap, and keep the approved transports in sync with the required target system.
A return file is put back into the development/QA control system to update the status of the organization’s change control and auditing mechanisms.
This return file confirms the delivery of the changes to the respective target system.
In many cases, the physical divide can be a barrier to adopting good change control practices and utilizing transport migration sequencing tools.
However with Rev-Trac, we have literally “bridged the air gap”.
For information about the Rev-Trac air gap offering, please feel to reach out to our SAP change management experts.
